Skip to main content

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 6415))

Abstract

Estimations of execution time are essential for design and development of safety critical embedded real-time systems, such as avionics, automotive and aerospace systems. In such systems, execution time is part of the functional specification, hence correct behaviour requires sufficiently powerful target hardware to meet deadlines or achieve required polling rates, etc. Yet, grossly overestimated resource usage results in excessive cost per unit. For a proper choice of the target platform, qualitatively good execution time estimates are required at an early stage of the development process.

In this paper we propose a framework which provides software engineers with execution time estimates of the software under development in a demand-driven manner, i. e. the engineers ask for timing information at program or function level with respect to different target hardware platforms. In a platform-independent manner we extract the necessary information from the code and combine it with platform-specific information, resulting in the time estimate. We implemented our framework on top of the test input generator FShell and its query language FQL. Preliminary experiments on C code show the viability of our approach.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Boehm, B.W.: Software Engineering Economics. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1981)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Westland, J.C.: The cost of errors in software development: evidence from industry. Journal of Systems and Software 62(1), 1–9 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Gustafsson, J., Altenbernd, P., Ermedahl, A., Lisper, B.: Approximate worst-case execution time analysis for early stage embedded systems development. In: Lee, S., Narasimhan, P. (eds.) SEUS 2009. LNCS, vol. 5860, pp. 308–319. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  4. Holzer, A., Januzaj, V., Kugele, S.: Towards Resource Consumption-aware Programming. In: ICSEA, pp. 490–493 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Lattner, C., Adve, V.S.: Llvm: A compilation framework for lifelong program analysis & transformation. In: CGO, pp. 75–88 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Holzer, A., Schallhart, C., Tautschnig, M., Veith, H.: How did you specify your test suite? In: ASE 2010 (to appear, 2010)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Holzer, A., Schallhart, C., Tautschnig, M., Veith, H.: Query-Driven Program Testing. In: Jones, N.D., Müller-Olm, M. (eds.) VMCAI 2009. LNCS, vol. 5403, pp. 151–166. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Holzer, A., Schallhart, C., Tautschnig, M., Veith, H.: FShell: Systematic Test Case Generation for Dynamic Analysis and Measurement. In: Gupta, A., Malik, S. (eds.) CAV 2008. LNCS, vol. 5123, pp. 209–213. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Giusto, P., Martin, G., Harcourt, E.: Reliable estimation of execution time of embedded software. In: DATE, pp. 580–589 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Januzaj, V., Mauersberger, R., Biechele, F.: Performance Modelling for Avionics Systems. In: Moreno-Díaz, R., Pichler, F., Quesada-Arencibia, A. (eds.) Computer Aided Systems Theory - EUROCAST 2009. LNCS, vol. 5717, pp. 833–840. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Mälardalen WCET research group: WCET Benchmarks (2010), http://www.mrtc.mdh.se/projects/wcet/benchmarks.html

  12. Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation: SPEC CPU2006 (2010), http://www.spec.org/

  13. Wilhelm, R., Engblom, J., Ermedahl, A., Holsti, N., Thesing, S., Whalley, D.B., Bernat, G., Ferdinand, C., Heckmann, R., Mitra, T., Mueller, F., Puaut, I., Puschner, P.P., Staschulat, J., Stenström, P.: The worst-case execution-time problem - overview of methods and survey of tools. ACM Trans. Embedded Comput. Syst. 7(3) (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Li, Y.T.S., Malik, S.: Performance analysis of embedded software using implicit path enumeration. In: DAC, pp. 456–461 (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Puschner, P., Schedl, A.: Computing maximum task execution times – a graph-based approach. Journal of Real-Time Systems 13(1), 67–91 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Ottosson, G., Sjödin, M.: Worst case execution time analysis for modern hardware architectures. In: SIGPLAN, pp. 47–55 (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Lindgren, M., Hansson, H., Thane, H.: Using measurements to derive the worst-case execution time. In: RTCSA, pp. 15–22 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Smith, C.U., Woodside, M.: Performance validation at early stages of software development. In: System Performance Evaluation: Methodologies and Applications, pp. 383–396 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Mohanty, S., Prasanna, V.K., Neema, S., Davis, J.R.: Rapid design space exploration of heterogeneous embedded systems using symbolic search and multi-granular simulation. In: LCTES-SCOPES, pp. 18–27 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Nenova, S., Kästner, D.: Worst-case timing estimation and architecture exploration in early design phases. In: WCET (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Wuerges, E., dos Santos, L.C.V., Furtado, O.J.V., Rigo, S.: An early real-time checker for retargetable compile-time analysis. In: SBCCI (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Gustafsson, J., Ermedahl, A., Lisper, B., Sandberg, C., Källberg, L.: Alf - a language for wcet flow analysis. In: WCET (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Wang, Z., Sanchez, A., Herkersdorf, A.: Scisim: a software performance estimation framework using source code instrumentation. In: WOSP, pp. 33–42 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Holzer, A., Januzaj, V., Kugele, S., Tautschnig, M. (2010). Timely Time Estimates. In: Margaria, T., Steffen, B. (eds) Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification, and Validation. ISoLA 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6415. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16558-0_5

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16558-0_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-16557-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-16558-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics